Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes)

Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) is a telemedicine program developed to treat chronic and complex diseases in rural and underserved areas of New Mexico. The project uses innovative technology to bridge the gap between urban healthcare specialists and providers in rural areas. The program provides patients with state-of-the-art healthcare in their own communities from their providers that they know and trust. For providers, co-management of the often lengthy and involved treatments brings added depth and technical competencies and reduces professional isolation. Continued collaboration and communication between rural providers and specialists allows for them to become highly skilled in the treatment of these chronic and complex diseases, thus creating a center of excellence in their community. The program uses video conferencing equipment, the Internet, and the telephone to faciliate communication between clinics. The telemedicine clinics use a standardized, case-based format that includes discussion of history, physical examination, test results, treatment complications, and psychiatric, medical, and substance abuse issues. Based on many factors of the patient, such as; alcohol usage, weight, smoking, and other health issues the provider is given a plan for the patient. Under Project ECHO, providers are able to treat their patients with a remote team of specialists in the fields of hepatology, psychiatry, infectious diseases, pharmacy and addiction.

The mission of Project ECHO is to develop the capacity to safely and
effectively treat chronic, common, and complex diseases in rural and
underserved areas, and to monitor outcomes of this treatment.

Each week, health care professionals from 21 primary care clinics across the state meet with UNM physicians via interactive video to discuss cases and determine treatment. Project ECHO has held some 400 interactive audio-video clinics involving case presentations and management of more than 3,900 mostly lower-income patients for Hepatitis C patients alone.